my sweet tooth got the best of me
by ten.years.only.with.you
Summary: Since she was eight, she's always chosen vanilla. Twenty years year, why question it? ZW : a tag to "in the heat and havoc".


**he's soft to the touch / but frayed at the ends he breaks / he's never enough / and still he's more than i can take. **

[-]

When she was a little girl and her father (now being 28 and knowing that is a big fat lie, it makes so much more sense about the little things, like compensation) took her to the ice cream shop in the city and let her pick whatever kind she wanted with as many toppings as she wanted in whatever cone she wanted, and she always wanted to get creative, to add to her deliciousness of what she held in her tiny tan hands, dripping sticky and honeyed in the New York heat, but without fail every time, it was vanilla.

Simple and sweet, something she could rely on to always please her taste buds and even though she loved it (now, she asks herself, why question it, really?), there was a lacking—some chocolate chips or a dash of caramel sauce that would have livened it up a bit and made it just as smooth on her tongue, but no, she has stuck to her principles since she was eight and twenty years later, she fails to see how that has let her down, but still, sometimes, vanilla can be _so_ blahhhh.

[-]

He is _not_ vanilla. He's that damn creamy orange, sweet magenta, and sparking green sorbet that she always wanted to try but never really felt like was her place to have so many colors melting down her fingers in an August month. Listen to what she says, it looks appealing, but she is afraid that once she has it, there will be a big old mess that she has to clean up and the flavors feel foreign on her lips and in her mouth and on her tongue and it is not supposed to be that _freeing_.

(He is not supposed to be that freeing.)

It is meant to be a terrible clash like that Gucci bag that she wore with the brown stilettos last fall when she went out after hours to have a few martinis with whatever his name was (seriously, he was so dull, she should have just named him after her bland childhood soft-serve). But it is delicious and sinfully good in a way that she doesn't really understand yet welcomes as she tries it on a Wednesday afternoon right out of the carton in Lavon's freezer.

She's got the spoon in the mess of a rainbow and timidly lifting it upwards, she cringes expecting the worst of outcomes but when it hits her lips, it's refreshing and satisfying. And then she really thinks that this heat wave is striking her better than anyone else when she is remembering ice cream shop trips and comparing them to her current love life so she slams the carton back in the freezer and tosses the sterling silver spoon in the sink and stalks out to the carriage house because this weather is turning her topsy-turvy in a way that she shouldn't like.

[-]

On the other hand, _he_ is vanilla. All nice and plain and just simple, sweet. If she is honest with herself (something that truly takes a feat because let's face it, she is in freaking Alabama, so she can't go much lower now can she?), there is comfort in that fact.

Comfort is **everything** to her.

She likes [loves] her rules and tries to follow [mandates without question] them to a perfect score and never ever steps [and i mean never] steps out of line and does anything out of the ordinary. But of course, these kinds of situations work fantastically on paper. Words played out on a page in synchronization that goes in favor of the constant that she has leaned on since she was eight and learned that vanilla was easy and safe and she _likes_ vanilla. There is a reason she hasn't given it up over the years and she won't sway, no sir, she will not because this is who she is and no one is going to change that.

[-]

(Two day dreams, one shirtless encounter, and a bucket of condoms later, her mind is like a dizzy moth floating around in space, seamlessly trying to put the fact of the sorbet melting sticky down her hands as she punctures the word "vanilla" in her mind as hard as possible but is overrun by a crooked grin and biting wit and those strong shoulders that happen to be in the right places at the right times and to hell with her morality because. Well just because.)

[-]

She rewrites her history, sauntering into the bar a ghost of a grin playing on her lips and saddles up to the counter, misting an eye over him as he perches over and plays dumb [plays the southern gentleman]. Extending an invitation, that seductive spark catches in his eye and flames huge like some firework exploding in the sky and she is pretty sure that she will regret it tomorrow but be damned if she is going to let her free pass get the best of her.

[-]

It's horribly clichéd how they stand there dripping in the rain and even though this is supposed to be the end of the heat wave and the craziness and all those [incredibly hot] images of him swimming through her head are just wrong, wrong, wrong, she only sees him leaning with a slight of his hip turned into hers. His feet are bare and his shirt is unbuttoned in a way that she knows he didn't do strategically, but does him justice by any count of her imagination (and trust her, it's _way_dangerous in there) and he's got this look on his face like he is cursing the weather gods for playing him so terribly [getting his hopes shooting into the solar system] and he stares at her.

Takes in her mess of [chocolate silk] waves and [slim golden] thighs and [not so tart, he had once reckoned] cherry mouth and breathes sins on his lips as he is not so safe and secure—solely a free pass. And she remembers the way the colors and flavors felt on her tongue that Wednesday afternoon [what he tastes like on her tongue] and she cannot let it get the best of her because she has convinced herself for twenty years that vanilla is who she is and what she wants and who she will be with and one taste of it [of him] and it all goes spiraling down the drain and she loses what she worked so hard to maintain.

But still, if she were another girl in an another time with another purpose, she would. But she's not. She's just this person and he's, well, not.

[-]

It kind of makes her wonder with one toe in the pond and the other on dry land, what is better. (Always considering her options.)

On the one hand you have comfort and familiarity that never disappoints and never falters. Always knows what to do and what words to say and how to fix the world that lies in broken pieces if it ever needs to be fixed and mended without question, giving hope to the fact that _yes,__yes__i__will__never__let__you__down_. And really that is beautiful and the only thing she knows and ever wants to know, but that nagging bit in the back of her mind says _life__isn__'__t__really__like__that,__is__it__Zoe__Hart?_

And then on the other hand you have this hurricane of theory and doubt that will disappoint and falter and fail (probably without even trying very hard to do so) and cannot fix the world even with the strongest tools in the arsenal and plainly, is just too far out of bounds to be considered as a worthy opponent. But something in that stirs her to life because there is the promise of the little wonders like homemade gumbo and hands fitting [oh so perfectly] on her hips and the way his smile goes up a touch farther on the right angle that may tell her why life is not going to be how she wants.

[-]

So she jumps.


End file.
